Stephen Jay Gould WTC Articles1

Stephen Stephen Jay Gould WTC Articles1

Images of division and enmity marked my first contact, albeit indirect, with Nova Scotia — the common experience of so many American schoolchildren, grappling with the unpopular assignment of Longfellow’s epic poem Evangeline, centered upon the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. My first actual encounter with Maritime Canada, as a teenager on a family motor trip in the mid 1950’s, sparked nothing but pleasure and fascination, as I figured out the illusion of Moncton’s magnetic hill, marvelled at the tidal phenomena of the Bay of Fundy(Fig.1) (especially the reversing rapids of Saint John and the tidal bore of Moncton), found peace of spirit at Peggy’s Cove(Fig.2), and learned some history in the old streets of Halifax…

Figure 1 Bay of Fundy, Halifax

I have been back, always with eagerness and fulfillment, a few times since, for reasons both recreational and professional — a second family trip, one generation later, and now as a father with two sons aged 3 and in utero; a lecture at Dalhousie; or some geological field work in Newfoundland. My latest visit among you, however, was entirely involuntary and maximally stressful. I live in lower Manhattan, just one mile from the burial ground of the Twin Towers. As they fell victim to evil and insanity on Tuesday, September 11, during the morning after my 60th birthday, my wife and I, en route from Milan to New York, flew over the Titanic’s resting place and then followed the route of her recovered dead to Halifax. We sat on the tarmac for 8 hours, and eventually proceeded to the cots of Dartmouth’s sports complex, then upgraded to the adjacent Holiday Inn(Fig.3). On Friday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, Alitalia brought us back to the airport, only to inform us that their plane would return to Milan. We rented one of the last two cars available and drove(Fig.4), with an intense mixture of grief and relief, back home.

Figure 2 Peggy’s Cove, Halifax

The general argument of this piece, amidst the most horrific specifics of any event in our lifetime, does not state the views of a naively optimistic Polyanna, but rather, and precisely to the contrary, attempts to record one of the deepest tragedies of our existence. Intrinsic human goodness and decency prevail effectively all the time, and the moral compass of nearly every person, despite some occasional jiggling prompted by ordinary human foibles, points in the right direction. The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs. (An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415).

Figure 3 The hotel room at the Holiday Inn, Halifax

In an important, little appreciated and utterly tragic principle regulating the structure of nearly all complex systems, building up must be accomplished step by tiny step, whereas destruction need occupy but an instant. In previous essays on the nature of change, I have called this phenomenon the Great Asymmetry (with upper case letters to emphasize the sad generality). Ten thousand acts of kindness done by thousands of people, and slowly building trust and harmony over many years, can be undone by one destructive act of a skilled and committed psychopath. Thus, even if the effects of kindness and evil balance out in the course of history, the Great Asymmetry guarantees that the numbers of kind and evil people could hardly differ more, for thousands of good souls overwhelm each perpetrator of darkness.

I stress this greatly underappreciated point because our error in equating a balance of effects with equality in numbers could lead us to despair about human possibilities, especially at this moment of mourning and questioning; whereas, in reality, the decent multitudes, performing their ten thousand acts of kindness, vastly outnumber the very few depraved people in our midst. Thus, we have every reason to maintain our faith in human kindness, and our hopes for the triumph of human potential, if only we can learn to harness this wellspring of unstinting goodness in nearly all of us.

For this reason, a documentation of the innumerable small acts of kindness, the good deeds that almost always pass beneath our notice for lack of “news value,” becomes an imperative duty, a responsibility that might almost be called holy, when we must reaffirm the prevalence of human decency against our preeminent biases for hyping the cataclysmic and ignoring the quotidian. Ordinary kindness trumps paroxysmal evil by at least a million events to one, and we will not grasp this inspiring ratio unless we record the Everest of decency built grain by grain into a mighty fortress taller than any breakable building of mere concrete and steel.

Our media have stressed — as well they should — the spectacular acts of goodness and courage done by professionals pledged to face such dangers, and by ordinary people who can summon superhuman strength in moments of crisis: the brave firefighters who rushed in to get others out; the passengers of United Flight 93 who drew the grimly correct inference when they learned the fate of the Twin Towers, and died fighting rather than afraid, perhaps saving thousands of lives by accepting their own death in an unpopulated field. But each of these spectacular acts rests upon an immense substrate of tiny kindnesses that cannot be motivated by thoughts of fame or fortune (for no one expects their documentation), and can only represent the almost automatic shining of simple human goodness. But this time, we must document the substrate, if only to reaffirm the inspiring predominance of kindness at a crucial moment in this vale of tears.

Halifax sat on the invisible periphery of a New York epicenter, with 45 planes, mostly chock full of poor strangers from strange lands, arrayed in two lines on the tarmac, and holding 9000 passengers to house, feed and, especially, to comfort. May it then be recorded; may it be inscribed forever in the Book of Life: Bless the good people of Halifax who did not sleep, who took strangers into their homes, who opened their hearts and shelters, who rushed in enough food and clothing to supply an army, who offerred tours of their beautiful city and, above all, who listened with a simple empathy that brought this tough and fully grown man to tears, over and over again. I heard not a single harsh word, saw not the slightest gesture of frustration, and felt nothing but pure and honest welcome.

I know that the people of Halifax have, by long tradition and practice, shown heroism and self-sacrifice at moments of disaster — occasional situations that all people of seafaring ancestry must face. I know that you received and buried the drowned victims of the Titanic in 1912, lost one in ten of your own people in the Halifax Explosion of 1917, and gathered in the remains of the recent Swissair disaster.

But, in a sense that may seem paradoxical at first, you outdid yourselves this time because you responded immediately, unanimously, unstintingly, and with all conceivable goodness, when no real danger, but merely fear and substantial inconvenience, dogged your refugees for a few days. Our lives did not depend upon you, but you gave us everything nonetheless. We, 9000 strong, are forever in your debt, and all humanity glows in the light of your unselfish goodness.

And so my wife and I drove back home, past the Magnetic Hill of Moncton(Fig.5)(now a theme park in this different age), past the reversing rapids of Saint John, visible from the highway, through the border crossing at Calais (yes, I know, as in Alice, not as in ballet), and down to a cloud of dust and smoke enveloping a mountain of rubble, once a building and now a tomb for 5000 people. But you have given me hope that the ties of our common humanity will bind even these wounds. And so Canada, although you are not my home or native land, we will always share this bond of your unstinting hospitality to people who descended upon you as frightened strangers from the skies, and received nothing but solace and solidarity in your embrace of goodness. So Canada, because we beat as one heart, from Evangeline in Louisiana to the intrepid Mr. Sukanen of Moose Jaw, I will stand on guard for thee.